Thank you to fans, customers and members for your continued support of All These Roadworks writing! Here’s what’s happened over the last month.
Personal update
A difficult 2020 continues being difficult.
Australia has done pretty well with COVID-19, and the particular jurisdiction I’m in has done even better. Like most places that instituted sensible lockdown protocols, we are now coming out of the first wave (no active cases) and beginning to relax lockdown.
However, history and science tells us that a second wave is on the way, and it will almost certainly be significantly worse, even before taking into account that the southern hemisphere is now heading into winter. Please remain vigilant – particularly if you’re in the United States, which largely did *not* handle the virus well, and has not flattened the curve, and which is likely to still be seeing high numbers of wave 1 cases when wave 2 arrives. My heart goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones, or has been infected, or who has struggled with the financial and psychological effects of lockdown.
I’m still struggling myself. I’m definitely not producing anything like a week of full-time work in a week, and I’ve had very few occasions of my mind and my libido being aligned in the necessary way for writing new stories. I’m hoping to see some improvement as external stresses dissipate, but no promises.
I’m basically taking the approach of “this is a difficult time, do what you can do, and don’t beat yourself up about what you can’t”, and accepting it’s okay if I make less money as a result. Although, as it turns out, site profits have gone up steadily throughout COVID-19, not down, so that’s nice.
What does my output look like right now?
This is an update using the same structure as last month’s update.
- Administrative work on the site / sales is unaffected. I will still be publishing news updates, processing memberships, and responding to support requests.
- Story request backlog – I’ve gotten through a couple of the remaining requests. I currently have two undelivered requests to go. Both require a little more thought than the average story. It’s frustrating, but creativity simply won’t march to a beat.
- Unredeemed story requests / ongoing series – When the last current requests are finished, I will reach out to anyone who was backing an ongoing story about continuing it. They’ll take first priority on new requests.
- Other new stories – I still have many old Tumblr stories to republish. Some of them are getting rewritten or expanded as I put them up – improving an existing story is generally easier than writing a new one. Also if inspiration hits me for something that isn’t a request, I’m not letting it go to waste, so there have been a few entirely new stories over the last month.
- Story collections – Putting together story collections is easy. Doing the new “bonus” material at the end is harder, and is the primary thing slowing down new collections at present. I aim for at least three collections in May, and hopefully four. Two have already been delivered – Daddy’s Girl and The Milk Industry – so that leaves one to two more to go, of which one will definitely be a new collection rather than an update.
- Arth-Keros – The Guide to Arth-Keros remains suspended for now.
- Reality Check – There’s a certain level of artificiality in talking about real-life kink while everyone’s stuck at home. I’m searching for a topic that’s relevant to where we are right now, and will put up an article once I have one.
- Bonus Material – The chapters of Hailey’s Training will continue going up on Google Drive for Premium Members at a rate of one a week until those are exhausted.
What did members get in April?
Early Access
There were 22 new stories posted in Early Access in April.
Story Collections
All members received three new collections in March:
- Crime and Punishment – Stories of Law and Authority (2nd Edition) (view in shop)
- She’s Got The Look – Stories of Exploited Models and Erotic Fashion (view in shop)
- The Ternish Betrayal – A Novella of High-Fantasy Degradation (all new!) (view in shop)
Other content
Premium Members received the first chapters of Hailey’s Training, an unfinished novel-length story themed around watersports, incest and humiliation.
How is the site doing?
Purchases on the site continue to go up. In April, the site paid me a little shy of a full-time minimum wage for the month. It’s hard to tell if that represents sustained growth or a COVID-19 effect, but it’s nice either way.
(EDIT: A little shy of the full-time minimum Australian wage, which, after currency conversion, is nearly twice the minimum wage of the US.)
Thank you to everyone who’s purchased an e-book or membership over the period.
E-books now comprise about 75% of the site’s total profits, with memberships being the other 25%.
Donation
As part of the process of writing gender-degradation and non-consent erotica in a responsible way, I have committed to donating at least 5% of the site profits each month to a women’s charity combating domestic violence, unsafe housing and/or sexual assault. (See this post for more info.)
This month I donated an amount of $130 AUD (about $84 USD) to a registered charity providing domestic violence crisis support to women.
COVID-19 lockdown is putting a lot of pressure on domestic violence services right now, due to new stresses in relationships, and increased impacts on victims in abusive relationships having to spend more time with their partners. Now is a great time to make a donation to a domestic violence charity in your area if you have the ability to do so.
Conclusion
Thank you to all members for your continued support in a difficult time. I value you all immensely, and I hope you still feel like you’re getting good value for your memberships.
Thank you also to direct customers, and thank you to all fans, whether you spend money or not. The idea of monetising my work was always that the people who *did* have a disposable income to spend on erotica would subsidise my creative output for those who don’t, and I appreciate feedback and love from all my readers.
Remember – you can also support my work by:
* sharing your enthusiasm and links to my work in consenting kinky communities (but remember it’s high impact, so don’t put it anywhere where someone who doesn’t want to see it might be offended by it);
* reblogging my posts on BDSMLR,;
* catching typos in BDSMLR posts or e-books and reporting them to me;
* sharing your fanfiction or fan-art – I’ll even re-post it if (a) it falls within my range of kinks; (b) I’m satisfied you hold copyright to all elements; and (c) you give me explicit permission to do so.
Thanks again! And keep enjoying!
– All These Roadworks
May 2020